CHAPTER TWO
When Hugh and Jonas Wilson returned to the parking lot, a few people had already formed up for the afternoon session. Some brought umbrellas and lawn chairs and set them in the backs of pickups, but as the afternoon grew hotter and the workers did little more than drive around in their bulldozers, raising dust and collecting debris from inside the building, they eventually grew bored and left.
Hugh noticed that Goodlett didn’t like the crowd and shied away. She picked a spot by the curb near the Railway Express Office and lay down, almost completely disappearing against the concrete’s gray background.
Phelps Crane showed up two or three times during the afternoon and tried to talk people into coming to a meeting that night at his station, but no one would commit. The flask in his overalls pocket had been replaced by a sack-wrapped pint bottle, exactly like Jonas Wilson’s, and the old conductor often moved off by himself and sneaked nips from it. Each time he appeared he would march around talking earnestly to people. His face grew ruddier than ever, and small veins burst on his nose, giving it a red, almost clownlike appearance. The more he talked, the madder and hotter he became. Soon his shirt was stained dark blue with sweat, and people refused even to look at him. Eventually, he just stood around and mopped his balding head with a red bandana, swore softly in between sips from his bottle, and kicked at debris on the parking lot.
He refused to speak to Hugh or Jonas Wilson—to one because he was just a kid, and to the other because he was Jonas Wilson—but he glared at the two of them as they leaned against their wooden pylons and chatted idly about the workers’ progress. Finally, he stalked over to a pay phone on the corner and started pumping coins into it.
Tommy showed up about midafternoon, but he didn’t hang around very long, either. Hugh wanted to borrow makings from Wilson and show his newfound talent to his friend, but he was too fearful of smoking in public to do so, and he contented himself with ignoring Tommy until he got angry and left. It wasn’t until after Tommy pedaled off that Hugh recalled Tommy’s bid for a supper invitation and realized that Tommy was probably madder about that than anything.
About four-thirty the sun was behind some of the taller buildings on Main Street, and people began to gather once more in the shade. One or two brought ice cream freezers and sat down behind them on campstools and began churning away. Lydia Fitzpatrick, a tall, too-skinny woman with bright red hair and too-short shorts, showed up and started grilling steaks for her family on a portable propane grill mounted on a shiny new and pine-floored lowboy trailer that her husband, Carl, towed behind his dual-axle Ford 350 crewcab pickup.
“They going to work through the night?” Carl Fitzpatrick demanded of the gathering crowd when he walked up. When no one knew, he seemed disappointed. Carl was a handsome man about the same age as Hugh’s father, but deeply tanned and careful in his appearance. His black hair was razor cut and silvery at the temples, and more than one of the men in Central Drugs had confided through chuckles that Carl—and Lydia—had availed themselves of cosmetic surgery. Hugh glanced into the cooler Carl opened and spotted several cans of beer in the ice. The Fitzpatricks were hoping for a party, he thought.
Carl winked at Hugh, the only person paying any attention to him, then he pulled a can of beer from the cooler, wiped it with a towel, and inserted it into a plastic Coca-Cola can wrapper to disguise it. Hugh moved off to watch the workers.
Just before five o’clock, a white Dodge sedan with the Burlington Northern logo on it drove down Main Street. The driver, wearing a suit, slowed when he passed the parking lot and studied the milling crowd, then gunned the car’s engine and sped down to the worksite. He ground up next to the demolition crew’s small trailer, jumped out, and talked to one of the hard-hatted men. Then he put on a white plastic hard hat, and they went inside the building.
“Told you they was in trouble,” Jonas Wilson jeered, but aside from frowns caused by the source of the comment, no one paid him any attention. Hugh smiled.
Eventually, the men came out and talked a while longer. They looked at the crowd up by the tracks, and then the suited man got into his car and drove up to where everyone was gathered.
He parked the car, got out, and looked around, his hands on his hips, his head shaking in a kind of disapproving gesture. Settling on Carl Fitzpatrick, the only other individual present in a coat and tie, he took a visible deep breath and approached. Although he had fixed his mouth into a smile, he was not in a very good mood.
“My name’s Grissom. I’m with Burlington Northern, Fort Worth Bureau,” he announced to Carl, who refused to take his hand when he shoved it out. The smile evaporated. “I got a call this morning that a bunch of people were interfering with this project, so I thought I’d come see what the matter was.”
“There’s nothing the matter,” Carl said. “We’re just a bunch of folks getting together to watch a little bit. For the fun of it. I can’t see that we’re ‘interfering’ with anything. We’re just having an old-fashioned picnic.”
“Here?” the railroad man opened his arms and gestured to the parking lot between the tracks. Smoke from Lydia’s grill rose from the lowboy. Card tables and portable picnic tables had appeared and were being arranged around the Fitzpatrick vehicle.
“Looks like,” Carl said.
The young man walked away and over to the cable-connected pylons. He noted the lawn chairs, backed-in pickups, and general semicircle of people, all gathered around the perimeter of the lot facing the workers below. Then he turned and approached Carl again. His smile returned, but his brow wrinkled in a sympathetic expression.
“This is all just silly,” he said in a pleasant but firm voice. “What is it you people find so fascinating down there? It’s just a bunch of men doing their jobs.”
“We’re watching,” Carl said and smiled. Carl was a lawyer, but he was also running for city attorney. “I don’t think we’re breaking any laws. It’s a public parking lot.”
“It’s not,” the man said. “This is railroad property. Everything between the tracks is railroad easement. Technically, you people are trespassing.”
“People been using this parking lot for U-turns since before you was born!” Phelps Crane stepped through the crowd and strode up to the railroad man. “And long’s anybody remembers, it’s been city crews patched up the road between these two tracks. Ain’t that right?” The crowd moved in closer to hear better. Some of those on the near side nodded wisely and murmured assent.
George Ferguson stepped forward and backed up Phelps. “I don’t see as we’re doing anybody any harm,” he said.
“Don’t you people have homes to go to?” The railroad man was not happy at the growing crowd around him. “I mean, Christ, it’s hot out here.” The crowd began talking among themselves, and the young man surveyed them with a wary eye. Suddenly the walking shorts, bright summer blouses, khakis, and workshirts began to form themselves into something resembling a wall. He turned in a complete circle as he spoke, opening his arms in a helpless gesture. “I mean, is this all there is for entertainment in this town? Don’t you have a movie or something? What the hell are you people really up to?”
“What makes you think we’re up to anything?” Carl asked, his smile plastic. “And I’ll thank you to watch your language.”
The railroad man pulled out a handkerchief and mopped his brow. Then he lowered his tone. “Look,” he said, “I’m sorry. I had a long drive up here, and it’s hot. Now, I know there are some people in this town who aren’t happy about all this, but these men are down there to do a job. That’s all. We don’t want any trouble, and—”
“We wasn’t having no trouble till you come up here and started it,” Phelps yelled. “Why’d you come up here anyway if you didn’t want to start trouble?” Phelps’s hammy fists were clenched tightly. Sweat poured off his scowl. He looked like he wanted to hit somebody, Hugh thought.
“I just want to know what it is that’s so fascinating about a bunch of construction workers,” Grissom said softly.
“Well,” the voice once again came from behind Hugh, once again from Jonas Wilson, but this time the boy didn’t jump. “I can tell you that there ain’t much interesting about construction workers. But destruction workers. That’s something else again.”
People in the crowd glanced at each other for assurance, then smiled uncomfortably in agreement, but Carl Fitzpatrick took a breath and stepped forward to seize the moment for himself.
“That’s right! We’ve been looking at that building all our lives. It’s part of this town.”
“Just like the goddamn depot was,” Phelps put in hotly.
“And we’re not sure we want it decon—uh . . . demolished,” Carl finished, hooking his thumbs in his waistband. He looked about him as if he were searching for a platform. Finding none, he rocked back on his heels and waited for the railroad man to answer.
Grissom loosened his tie after glancing at his watch and frowning. “I think we’ve already been over that,” he said. “Your own judge Parker—”
“Our judge?” Carl shot with a lawyer’s grasp of a hole in a witness’s testimony. “Who said he was ‘our judge’? I mean, he lives here—lived here all his life—but I think if you’ll check, you’ll find he’s a superior court judge. He’s our neighbor, our friend, maybe, but he’s not ‘our judge.’ That’s sort of a dangerous thing to say, Mr. . . . Mr.?”
“Grissom.”
“Mr. Grissom,” Carl finished and flashed a toothy smile. “You seem to have a problem with your language, today.”
“Anyway.” Grissom recovered himself. “Judge Parker has already ruled that the building is to be razed, and there’s nothing you people can do to stop it.”
“Go on and raze it, then,” George put in. “Who the hell’s stopping you?”
“The building’s going to stop ’em,” Jonas Wilson said, but this time, no one paid him any mind. “It’s like a monument,” he finished. “You don’t just tear down monuments.”
The railroad man heard that and gave Wilson a quick look of dismissal. “You’re crazy!” he shouted. Then he calmed himself. “That’s just an old building. A derelict. Nobody wants it. We tried to sell it for years, and nobody even made an offer on it.”
“How long you been with the company, boy?” Phelps accused angrily. “You don’t know nothing about what’s been done ‘for years.’ Hell, you weren’t even out of short britches when I was busting my hump for the FW&D. And what did that get me? A pension a Mescan couldn’t live on, hemorrhoids, fallen arches, and hives, busted bones and deaf in one ear from a hotbox that went up at Estelline. Hell, I worked so many nights, I can’t sleep between sundown and sunup. Who the hell cares about that?”
Grissom stood aghast at the old conductor’s tirade. “What the hell does that have to do with anything?” he demanded. “Jesus Christ! I’m not responsible—”
“I told you, damnit,” Carl put in, “keep a civil tongue in your head, or I’ll call the sheriff.”
“And I told you,” Grissom shouted to the crowd, “You people are on company property. I think you ought to move off before I call the sheriff.”
“You go on ahead and call him,” Phelps challenged. “His name’s Anderson, and he’s not worth a tin shit. This here’s a public U-turn lot, and I don’t give a good goddamn in hell what you got wrote down somewhere on a piece of paper. Folks in this town been using this lot for longer than you been born. Since before there was cars.”
“How is that possible?” the railroad man turned around for support, but everywhere he looked he found hostility or, at the least, detached curiosity as to what he might say next. “You can’t have a U-turn without cars.”
“Yeah, you can,” Jonas Wilson spoke up once more. This time heads turned around to look at him. A beam of sunlight snaked out from behind a building and fell across the crowd. Many hands went up to foreheads to shield against it. Hugh thought they all looked like they were saluting him.
“Folks was parking wagons and mules and horses here long ’fore the first automobile come into this country. Long ’fore there was a depot here.”
“And just how the hell would you know?” the railroad man sniffed.
“ ’Cause I helped build the depot,” he said calmly. He pulled the makings out of his pocket and began rolling a smoke. “And I seen the first automobile in this county. Cadillac, I think it was. Belonged to Jacob Hadnought, daddy to the boy who farms up on Blind Man’s Creek. He was a big-time capitalist. Banker. Married money. Went bust in the Depression. Served him right. He skinned a lot of folks. His boy’s all right, though. Works with his hands.”
There was a moment of silence as Jonas completed rolling his cigarette and lit it with a kitchen match. People were looking at the old man with a kind of bewildered curiosity in their eyes. Hugh wondered if any of them had ever heard so many words from him before.
“Carl?” Lydia Fitzpatrick called from behind the cordon of people who surrounded Grissom. “Your steak’s ready. Come get it before it dries up. You know how tough it can get when it dries up.” Carl stood his ground, but he shifted his weight uncomfortably.”Look,” Harvey Turnbull spoke up. “We’re not happy about what you’re doing down there. But I don’t see how we’re stopping you by watching.”
Grissom gave Harvey a narrow look. “You’re making the men nervous.”
“What’re they afraid of?” Phelps sneered. “That old Lydia might not have ’em up for ice cream after while?”
“The point is that we’re not stopping you. We can’t stop you,” George Ferguson spoke up. “If we could, we would. But we ain’t hurting anything by watching. Are we?”
“No,” Grissom sighed. Hugh looked down and noticed that the workers were piling into pickups, quitting for the day.
“I guess you people aren’t hurting anything standing around here in the heat,” Grissom said at last. “But if you do anything to interfere with those men and their work, I will call the sheriff—” He shot a look at Phelps. “Or the Highway Patrol, if I have to. We’re within our legal rights, you know. We’re a federally protected corporation. If I have to, I’ll call the FBI.”
“The FBI!” Phelps roared with laughter. “Goddamn, Lydia? What kind of ice cream are you making?”
Grissom flushed and turned away, pushing through the wall of people and making his way back to his car. “The show’s over for today, folks,” he announced. “I don’t know why we don’t sell tickets.” Then he stopped when he opened the door and addressed the crowd behind him. “That building’s coming down,” he stated. “Like it or not. It’s just a building, and this time tomorrow, it’ll be down.”
“We’ll see ’bout that,” Hugh heard Jonas Wilson mutter from behind him. But when he turned around to speak to the old man, all he saw was his shuffling form retreating toward the hotel. Goodlett rose from her curbside position and padded along in his wake.
“What I want to know,” Edith Rudd demanded as soon as Hugh sat down to supper and winced with ironic reaction at the big tureen of pinto beans and plate of cornbread that dominated the center of the table, “is just where you think you’ve been all day?”
“The boy doesn’t think he’s been anywhere,” Harry munched down on a fresh spring onion. “Bring some butter over here, please. He knows where he’s been.” He looked at Hugh and winked. “So, Sport, where have you been all day?”
Hugh dug his spoon into the beans and filled his mouth. “Downtown, watching—”
“Don’t speak with your mouth full,” Edith ordered. Then she sat down.
“I asked for some butter,” Harry said. Hugh noticed for the first time in his life that his father looked old—not as old as Jonas Wilson, but certainly older than Carl Fitzpatrick.
“In a minute,” Edith said. She waited until Hugh chewed and swallowed, and then she put out a hand to stay his second bite. “Now, where were you all day?”
“I was downtown,” he mumbled. “For a while. I wanted to watch them tear down that old building.”
“For a while,” she repeated, her blue eyes fixed on him, searching his face.
“Well.” He flanked her hand and picked up a piece of cornbread. “I was downtown most of the day.”
“That’s what I thought.” She rose and fetched the margarine from the refrigerator. “And who were you with?”
“Tommy,” Hugh said brightly.
“Don’t lie to me!” Edith slammed down the margarine dish and splattered glass and the artificial butter all over Harry, who scooched his chair back quickly from the table and upset his iced tea.
“I will not tolerate being lied to!”
“What the hell is going on here?” Harry demanded. “Edith, what’s wrong with you?”
“The boy has the gall to come in here and sit down at my table and lie in answer to a direct question,” she shouted at Harry. “He’s your son! Do something about it!”
“I was with Tommy,” Hugh protested. “He met me at the water tower, and we rode our bikes down together. You can ask—”
“I did ask him,” Edith said. “Harry, are you just going to sit there, or are you going to do something about this?”
“About what?” Harry Rudd’s face was a mask of confusion rapidly changing to anger. His shirt and trousers were wet with spilled tea. “I don’t know what the hell’s going on!”
“He was downtown, all right,” Edith bit her words off carefully. “And he spent the whole day down there. And do you know who with?”
Harry looked at his wife with a puzzled expression. “Am I supposed to know? Jesus, Edith, I was at the mill all day. How the hell am I supposed to know what’s happening downtown?”
“Well, he’s your son?”
“That’s true enough.” Harry stood up and wiped his wet clothes down with a paper napkin. Then he turned to Hugh, who had not moved through the whole ordeal.
“Who were you with today?” He put up his hand. “Don’t answer ‘Tommy.’ We’ve had that answer, and it won’t work. Now who?”
“Jonas Wilson!” Edith said. Her voice cracked as she spoke, and her eyes roamed the kitchen as if she expected to find some stranger lurking in a corner. “That old man? That’s who! Your son spent the whole day with that awful old man!” She collapsed into a chair, put her hands over her face. Harry put out his hand, but she ignored it, rose, and raced out of the kitchen. “Talk to him, Harry. For God’s sake, talk to him,” she cried from the other room.
“You’d best go out onto the porch,” Harry said. Hugh obeyed. Inside the house, he heard his parents arguing. They hadn’t argued much in his life. His mother, he knew, was what his father called “fragile,” and she had been for a long time. Hugh’s brother—his baby brother—Larry died mysteriously in his crib shortly after he was born, and his mother never completely recovered from the ordeal. Ever since, both his parents had treated Hugh with a special kind of love, and Hugh’s father had treated his mother with a special kind of delicacy, rarely raising his voice to her or to Hugh, being especially solicitous when she seemed overwrought for any reason.
Growing up, Hugh had been given more lenience than many of his friends. He was aware of the special status he owned, and he often was aware that he could abuse it if he wasn’t careful. Somehow, he sensed, any misstep whatsoever could hurt his mother beyond repair. For that reason, he always tried to be especially good, especially trustworthy. It wasn’t something he thought about, just something he did in response to his parents’ attitude toward him as their sole surviving child. He was, as his mother so often called him when she bragged on him, “a good boy, a model child.” Even before he understood what the words meant, he instinctively understood that his responsibility in the family was greater than that many of his friends had to bear. He had to be good, for his mother, fragile as she was, depended on it. If he failed, she would be the one who was hurt.
But this wasn’t his fault, he argued with the twilight surrounding the porch. He hadn’t wanted to spend the day with Jonas Wilson. It just happened. He couldn’t see that it hurt him any or hurt his mother at all. In fact, he was already looking forward to seeing the old man the next morning. Except for the cigarette, he couldn’t think of a thing Wilson had done or said that he couldn’t tell both his parents.
Well, he remembered, the cigarette and the whiskey. But he hadn’t touched the bottle. Wilson wouldn’t let him, and Hugh knew that his parents kept a fifth of bourbon under the kitchen sink behind the drain trap, and he knew that from time to time, on special occasions such as holidays and celebrations, it was taken out and opened.
Wilson had only two swallows, Hugh continued in his silent debate, and he’d bet that his parents—or at least his mother—didn’t stop always there. No, Hugh insisted to the buzzing June bugs smashing against the door’s screen, Wilson didn’t have any really bad habits at all. Hell, Hugh thought with a shake of his head, Wilson didn’t even cuss.
He saw his father move back into the kitchen and scoop up a spoon full of beans and shovel them into his mouth. Heavy as he was, Harry always seemed to be hungry, Hugh thought. He came home, ate two helpings of everything, then had a smoke and fell asleep in the easy chair. Then he would wake up and have a dish of ice cream or a leftover piece of pie or cake before going to bed. He had a big belly and a double chin under his five-o’clock shadow. He wasn’t strong or well built. But he loved his son, and he had a good heart. That much Hugh was certain of.
As Hugh peeked through the kitchen curtains and saw Harry Rudd fill his mouth once more before washing it down with the remainder of Hugh’s tea, Hugh was already outlining the speech on personal trust and responsibility he knew he was about to receive. Tonight, he knew, it would be heavily laced with reminders of how delicate his mother’s disposition was, how important it was for him not to upset her when he didn’t have to, and how much she depended on his being trustworthy.
He had heard it before. All last summer, in fact, his father had provided him with a weekly recital of how much he loved him, how he wanted to be able to trust him. And when Hugh decided to undertake to mow all those lawns this summer, he had received a double dose every week, especially since his father agreed to co-sign for the new mower. Hugh knew the speech by heart. He prepared himself for it. But his father surprised him.
Harry came out and sat down heavily in the glider. He had the end of a cornbread muffin in his hand, and he polished it off, then lit a Camel before he spoke.
“I seem to recall something about co-signing a charge account at the hardware store for a lawn mower,” he said quietly. Hugh nodded, and Harry took the cue and went on. “I seem to recall some promises being made about paying it off by the end of July at the latest.” Hugh nodded again. “How many lawns did you mow today?”
“None,” Hugh mumbled.
“How do you propose to keep up payments on that machine if you don’t do work with it?”
“I just took off one day, Dad.”
“Well, Sport,” Harry sighed and flicked his butt out into the yard, “that’s true enough. But you can’t let it be a habit. One day off leads to another, and pretty soon, you’re too far behind to catch up.”
“I just wanted to watch them tear down that building.”
“I understand that, Sport. I even understand all the excitement around town about it. It’s like your mother said. It’s kind of a landmark around here.”
“It’s a monument,” Hugh said, hearing Wilson’s voice echoing in his mind.
“A monument, huh?” Harry thought for a moment. “I don’t know if it’s a ‘monument’ or not, but it’s been there a long time. I guess you could see it that way, though. These days, there aren’t many things that last that long.”
“Mr. Crane is having a meeting tonight at his station to try to stop them,” Hugh said. So far the talk was going well. He hadn’t spoken to his father this way before, and it relieved him and made him anxious at the same time. Further, he thought darkly, it kept the topic away from why he was out there in the first place.
“Heard about that.”
“At the mill?”
“Phelps called up some guys who used to work for the railroad. He wants to get up a petition or something.”
“Would you sign it?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
Harry looked out into the gathering night. Hugh wondered if Jonas and Goodlett were sleeping beneath the chinaberry tree. Sheet lightning flashed in the distance. No storm was coming—not tonight—it was only heat flashes out on the prairie.
“I just don’t think so,” Harry said at last, firing up another Camel.
“Why not? Don’t you think it’s worth saving? Even if it’s not a monument, it ought to be worth something.”
“I don’t know,” Harry said. He used the cigarette end to burn a mosquito that had landed on his forearm. “Skeeters are bad out here tonight.” He rose and moved out and sat next to Hugh. “I don’t think they ought to tear it down, but I can’t think of any reason to stop them. They own it. They need the land it’s sitting on, I understand. For a wye.”
“Just what is a wye?”
Harry forked his fingers and explained. “It’s a place they turn the freight around. They back the train in from one direction onto a straight sidetrack, throw the switch, and take it out the other way. Saves a lot of time for the switch engines. Otherwise, on short runs, they have to back them all the way down from the mill here to Fort Worth. The trains make the mill’s business work better. A wye will let them run shorter trains more often without losing money.”
“So you’re all for it,” Hugh asked.
Harry sighed. “Don’t know. Don’t much care, to be honest. But since I’m sort of in management, now, it’s better if I don’t rock the boat.”
“Would they say anything to you if you signed a petition to stop it? Fire you, maybe?”
Harry’s form stiffened. “No, they wouldn’t fire me. They wouldn’t say anything. I don’t think they would, anyway. But the next time promotions came around or a big raise, time off, anything like that, I might not get it.”
“That’s not fair!” Hugh declared. “In social studies, Mr. Diamond says that in America—”
“In America,” Harry interrupted, “you have to learn pretty quick that you do what The Boss wants. He’s The Man. He pays the freight.” Harry sighed deeply. “You have to learn that you can do pretty much what you want. Say what you want. But if it goes against the flow, you pay for it. In the end you always pay for it, one way or another.”
“I don’t think they ought to tear it down,” Hugh said softly. “I think they ought to just leave it like it is.”
“Well, Sport, I agree with you,” Harry smiled across at him. “But there’s not much you or I or Phelps Crane or any petition can do about it. Is there?”
Hugh thought for a moment. “No, I guess not.” They sat in silence for a long moment, and Hugh wanted to go back inside. Mosquitoes were buzzing his ear. He pulled one sneaker up beneath him to push himself up, but his father’s voice stopped him.
“Tell me about Jonas Wilson.”
“There’s not much to tell,” Hugh said quietly and resettled himself uncomfortably. He should have known he wouldn’t escape so easily.
“What did you do with him today?”
“I wasn’t with him,” Hugh protested again. “I was just standing around, and he asked me to eat with him.”
“Eat with him? What did you eat?”
“Sandwiches.”
“God, that old man must live on road kills. What kind of sandwiches?”
“Well, one was just tomato and mustard, and one was squash and mustard.”
“My God, Hugh, that sounds awful.” Harry gagged slightly.
“No,” Hugh turned to his father and looked across the backyard. “It was good! I didn’t think it would be, but the vegetables were fresh, crunchy. He grew them himself. And it was good. He said they would be better with mayonnaise, but it goes sour in hot—”
“Did you have anything to drink?” The question hung in the darkness like a moth fluttering about in search of a flame.
“No,” Hugh said sincerely. “I didn’t.”
“Did he?”
Hugh took two beats of a pause. “He had two sips, but he—”
“He wouldn’t let you have any,” Harry finished for him.
Hugh brightened. “That’s right. He said I was too young.”
Harry said nothing, but then he rose to his feet. “Wait here,” he ordered, and he went inside.
In a moment he was back, and he sat down where he had been before and produced the bottle from under the sink. “Do you know what this is?”
“Whiskey,” Hugh identified the half-full bottle.
Harry unscrewed the cap, tilted the bottle. He didn’t pump it down his throat the way Jonas had done, but he sipped two quick swallows, then held the bottle out to Hugh.
“Go on,” he nudged Hugh’s arm with the bottle’s neck. “It’s okay. I said it was. It’s not a trick.”
“No.” Hugh shook his head. He felt cold all over, spongy inside as if he needed to cry or run away. “I don’t want any, thank you.”
Harry continued to hold the bottle out for another second or two, then he took another swallow and recapped it. “Promise me something,” he said quietly. Hugh remained silent. “Okay, Sport?” Hugh nodded. “When you take your first drink of whiskey, take it with me. Okay?”
Hugh nodded again, and Harry rose.
“Stay away from Jonas Wilson.”
“Why?” Hugh turned and rose in one movement. He realized for the first time in his life that he was as tall as his father.
“Because your mother wants you to,” Harry said as he pulled the screen door open. “That should be reason enough for you.”
It was a cheap shot, and both of them knew it. Hugh lowered his head. “What’s wrong with him?” he muttered.
“He’s a crazy old man,” Harry replied. “That’s all you need to know. Stay away from him. Edith!” he called, then went inside. “If you’ve gotten yourself together and finished being hysterical, can we warm up some of this supper? I’m starved.”
Hugh skipped the second try at supper and went to his room. He was almost asleep when he remembered a vital detail in his conversation with his father. His father had ordered him to stay away from Jonas Wilson, but, unlike the whiskey, he hadn’t made him promise.